Oh, Youth!

For my thoughts were fathered by the vaulting conceit of my nineteen years. Consider . . . a few days before I had for the first time assumed a man's estate in sailordom. Already I was a marked man. Had I not stopped at the Knitting Swede's, and ruffled on equality with the hard cases? Had I not whipped the bully of the beach? Had I not been offered a fighting man's billet by the Swede, himself? Was not that glory?

Then how much greater the glory if I spoke up with a devil-may-care lilt in my voice, and shipped in the hottest packet afloat! Glory!—why, I would be the unquestioned cock of any foc'sle I afterward happened into. You know, in those days the ambitious young lads regularly shipped in the hot clippers; it was a postgraduate course in seamanship, and accomplishment of such a voyage gave one a standing with his fellows. I had intended going in one—in the Enterprise, or the Glory of the Seas, both loading in port. But the Golden Bough! No man shipped in her, sober, and unafraid. If I shipped, I should be famous the world around as the fellow who feared neither God, nor Devil, nor Yankee Swope and his bucko mates!

So I stood there, half wishful, half afraid, deaf to all save my own swirling thoughts. And there happened that which gave me my decision.

It was the man with the scar. He had been lounging against the bar, an uninterested spectator of the bestowing of the runnership. Now, my eyes fell upon him, and I saw to my surprise that he was shaken out of his careless humor. He was standing tensely on the balls of his feet, and his hands were gripping the bar rail so fiercely his fingers seemed white and bloodless. It was apparent some stern emotion wrestled him; the profile I saw was set like chiseled marble. There was something indescribably menacing in his poise. The sight of him jolted my ears open to the noises of the room.

The crowd was still talking about the Golden Bough. And the talk had progressed, as talk of the Golden Bough always progressed, from skipper and mates, to the lady. They spoke of the ship's mystery, of the Captain's lady. She was a character to pique a sailorman's interest, the Lady of the Golden Bough. Her fame was as wide, and much sweeter, than the vessel's. With all their toughs' frankness, the crowd were discussing the lady's puzzling relations with Swope.

"Uncommon queer, I calls it," said one chap, who had sailed in the ship. "They call 'em man an' wife, but she lives to port, an' he to starboard. Separate cabins, dash me! I had it from the cabin boy. They even eats separate. . . . He's nasty to her—I've heard the devil snarl at her more than once, when I've had a wheel. . . . Blank me, she's a blessed angel. There was I with a sprained wrist big as my blanked head, an' Lynch a-hazin' me to work—and every morning she trips into the foc'sle with her bright cheer an' her linaments. A blanked, blessed angel, she is!"

"He beats her," supplemented another man. "I got it from a mate what chummed with the bloke as was a Sails on her one voyage. He said, that sailmaker did, as how Swope got drunk, and beat her."

The big Cockney, who had been visibly possessed by a pompous self-importance since his elevation to the dignity of runner, saw fit to interpose his contrary opinion of the Lady of the Golden Bough. Because the man was vile, his words were vile.

"Blimme, yer needn't worrit abaht Yankee Swope's lydy, as yer call 'er. She arn't nah bleedin' lydy—she's just a blarsted Judy. Yer got to knock a Judy abaht, arn't yer? Hi 'arve hit straight—'e picked 'er hoff the streets——"

The man with the scar wheeled on his heel, reached out, and grasped the Cockney by his two wrists. I exclaimed aloud when I saw the man's full face. There was death in it. He spoke to Cockney in a voice of cold fury. "You lie!" he cried. "Say you lie!"

Cockney was a big man, and husky. He cursed, and struggled. But he was a child in the grasp of that white-faced giant towering over him. The hands I had seen gripping the rail a moment before, now gripped Cockney's wrists in the same terrible clutch. They squeezed, as though to crush the very bones. Cockney squirmed, and whimpered, then he broke down, and screamed in agony.

"Ow, Gaw' blimme, let hup! Hi never meant northin'! A lie— Ow, yuss—a lie! She's a proper lydy— Hi never 'eard the hother— Gaw' strike me blind!"

The man with the scar cast the fellow contemptuously away; and Cockney lost no time in putting the distance of the room between them. The big man turned on the Swede, and his voice was sharp and commanding.

"Swede, does the Golden Bough sail to-morrow?"

"Ja, with da flood," the Swede answered.

"Then I ship in her," declared the man. "I ship in the Golden Bough,
Swede!"

It was the spark needed to fire my own resolution. What another dared,
I would dare. I thumped the bar with my fist and sang out valorously,
"I ship in her too, Swede!"

The Swede's needles stopped flashing in and out of the gray yarn. He regarded us, one after the other, with his baby stare. Then he said to the big man, "Vat if your frients ship by her?"

"I have no friends," was the curt answer.

The Swede leaned back on his stool, and his big belly quivered with his wheezy laughter. "By Yimminy, Ay tank da Golden Bough haf vun lively voyage!" he exclaimed.

CHAPTER IV

We signed articles in the Swede's house, almost within the hour. A little man with a pimply, bulbous nose appeared in the house; he carried in his person the authority of Shipping Commissioner and in his hand the articles of the Golden Bough. After the careless fashion of the day and port we signed on without further ado for a voyage to Hong Kong and beyond—sitting at a table in the back room, and cementing the contract with a drink around.

The Shipping Commissioner made the usual pretense of reading the articles. Then he squinted up at us.

"What's yer John Henry's?" says he.

My big shipmate mused a moment. He stroked the scar on his forehead—a habit he had when thinking. He smiled.

"My name is Newman," he made answer. "It is a good name."

He took the pen from the Shipping Commissioner's hand and wrote the name in the proper place upon the articles. "A. Newman," that is how he wrote it. Not the first time he had clapped eyes upon ship's articles, one could see with half an eye. I wrote my own "John Shreve" below his name, with an outward flourish, but with a sinking sensation inwardly.

As soon as the ceremony was completed, A. Newman got to his feet, refused my pressing invitation to visit the bar, and went upstairs to his room. Now, this seemed very peculiar to my sailor's way of thinking; it seemed more peculiar than his choice of a name. Here we were, shipmates, together committed to a high adventure, yet the man would not tarry by my side long enough to up-end a schooner to a fair passage. I was to have other surprises before the day was out—the mean-faced beggar, and the way in which the Knitting Swede put us on board the Golden Bough. Surprising incidents. But this refusal of my new shipmate to drink with me was most surprising. Think of a sailor, a hard case, too, moping alone in his room on the day he shipped, when downstairs he could wassail away the day. I was surprised and resentful. It is hard for a nineteen-year-old man to stand alone, and I felt that Newman, my shipmate, should give me the moral support